报告题目: ACCESS HUMAN COMMUNITY MICROBIOTA THROUGH WASTEWATER: POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES

报告人:Dr. Yan Tao，Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI

时间：2016年6月15日（星期三）上午10:30

地点：大学城广东工业大学工学三号馆209

欢迎师生参加！

Dr. Tao Yan is currently an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Hawaii. He received his Bachelor degree in Environmental Engineering from Wuhan University of Technology, a MS degree from Tsinghua University, and a PhD degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota. His research interests are in the general areas of water quality and environmental biotechnology, with focused scientific interests in microbial ecology and environmental genomics. Currently, he is working to understanding the ecology of fecal indicator bacteria and pathogens in the environment, to identify fundamental principals governing microbial community structure and function dynamics, and to develop innovative biotechnological solutions to environmental and health challenges.

Abstract

Municipal wastewater systems (MWSs), including the collection and treatment systems, provide unique access to the collective microbiomes of human communities. This brings unparalleled capabilities in understanding and studying community health. This talk will present results from two case studies illustrating both the potentials and challenges of using MWSs to access human community microbiome for public health surveillance. The first study investigated the abundance and diversity of pathogenic E. coli genes, including stx1, stx2 and eaeA, in municipal wastewater. The relative abundance of eaeA gene versus the general E. coli marker gene uidA gene was determined by qPCR to estimate the proportion of EPEC in municipal wastewater, which indicates the prevalence of EPEC in the community to be around 1.0%. The diversity of E. colieaeA gene was determined by clone library construction followed by sequencing, which identified several major eaeA subtypes that are not commonly observed in health clinics. The second study obtained Salmonella isolates from weekly wastewater composite samples. The wastewater Salmonella isolates were typed using PFGE, and then compared with Salmonella isolates collected during the same time period from health clinics. The concurrent detection of numerous Salmonella serotypes in both health clinics and sewage samples strongly support the feasibility of using sewage for real-time disease outbreak surveillance.